The federal government will soon announce that it has chosen to purchase from Boeing to modernize its fleet of Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora aircraft, without a call for tenders process.
A government source familiar with the matter confirmed this information to The Canadian Press on Wednesday. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the issues.
A second government source specified that several billion dollars were at stake in this agreement.
The Quebec company Bombardier hoped to win this military supply contract, without success.
The source who confirmed that the final choice fell on the American manufacturer Boeing spoke of a “difficult political decision”, but a “good decision in terms of supply”.
It was also argued that waiting for the conclusion of a call for tenders process to finalize the supply agreement would have caused additional delays. According to this source, this could have caused Ottawa to miss a window of opportunity to move forward on the issue of the aging Royal Canadian Air Force fleet.
“We studied what Bombardier was proposing,” said this source, who added that “big question marks” remained in the scenario where this aeronautics player established in Montreal would have been favored.
Over the course of the evaluations that were made, in particular through National Defense, a “skepticism” emerged as to the “feasibility” of Bombardier’s proposal, it was summarized, mentioning the constraints of time allotted and of budget.
The second federal source noted that a key factor in the decision was to demonstrate that the planes can be obtained at a competitive price. This person suggested, behind the scenes, that the fact that Canada’s allies had already opted for a proven aircraft model could be seen as proof of the aircraft’s feasibility.